Review: Trail of Crumbs by Kim Sunee

Lately, I’ve been inexplicably drawn to foodie books in all their incarnations. It makes little sense to me, really. I don’t cook. I’m a picky eater. I hate grocery shopping. Nevertheless, I’ve picked up quite a few of the books in the past months. Some I’ve loved . Some, however, I’ve been slightly ambivalent towards. Unfortunately, Trail of Crumbs by Kim Sunee falls into the latter category.

Trail of Crumbs is a chronicle of Kim Sunee’s twenties living abroad, focusing primarily on her stay in Provence and Paris as the girlfriend of a rich French businessman. Much of the memoir revolves around food and the concept of home and how the two are almost always linked—from her grandfather’s gumbo in her childhood New Orleans, to the fresh air markets of France near her home with her lover, to the street vendor food in the Korea in which she was born and abandoned.

All the ingredients for a great memoir are here- tragedy, romance, drama, the hope for redemption. Unfortunately, I found Sunee slightly unsympathetic which made reading and caring about her life quite difficult. I am sure this says more about me than I’d care to admit, but, it was near impossible for me to muster much sympathy for a 22 year old woman living in the lap of luxury in a charming French village with her incredibly wealthy lover. At times, I struggled to find the motivation to finish the book.

But, finish it I did, a fact I owe almost entirely to the quality of Sunee’s writing. The food parts are descriptive and highly readable. The writing is fluid without being flowery, and kept me reading long after my initial interest had waned.